What Changes Minds About the Senate and Judge Garland?

Most of the survey respondents who registered an opinion said the Senate should vote on whether to confirm Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, a new online poll shows. And, as we’ve found before, the more historical context they’re given, the more likely people are to think the Senate should vote now.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said this week he was sticking to his position that the current Senate should not vote on President Obama’s choice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, no matter how the November elections turn out.

In the new poll by Morning Consult, 47 percent of registered voters said they thought the Senate should vote on whether to confirm Judge Garland, while 23 percent said the Senate should not. The remaining respondents said they didn’t know or had no opinion.

Partly because Supreme Court vacancies are rare, Morning Consult gave poll respondents nine bits of history after first posing the question, asking after each fact if the additional context would change voters’ opinions. In almost each case, more information made voters somewhat more likely to prefer a Senate vote now.

The question most likely to cause a change was the one that made the current Senate look bad in the light of history. When respondents were told that, in modern history, the Senate has never refused to hold hearings on a nominee, 35 percent of registered voters said it made them more likely to think the Senate should vote now (versus 15 percent saying less likely).

Of the nine pieces of historical context that respondents were given, one resulted in essentially a tie, and it was one that made Democrats look hypocritical. When people were told that Democrats once changed the rules to confirm judicial nominees ( the Supreme Court was an exception), 23 percent of registered voters said this fact made them more likely to think the Senate should vote (with 22 percent saying less likely).

Partisanship remains a crucial divider among Americans on this issue; across the board, the additional context swayed Democrats most and Republicans least. But in the political battle that’s already taking shape, you can expect information like this from both parties as they justify their positions.

As my colleague Adam Liptak notes, Chief Justice John Roberts invoked this historical context just 10 days before Justice Scalia’s death, lamenting that the politicization of the nomination process could damage the legitimacy of the court.

Morning Consult, a digital media company that conducts weekly online polls, surveyed 2,011 registered voters from March 16 to 18.